President Donald Trump has already formed opinions about who should lead Iran after his military campaign removes its current government, publicly dismissing a leading candidate for the supreme leadership as “a lightweight” and expressing his desire to be personally involved in the selection process. The comments are extraordinary: a sitting American president weighing in on the internal succession process of a country he is currently bombing.
The campaign producing that succession opening has been relentless. American B-2 stealth bombers have struck Iran’s buried missile infrastructure with dozens of 2,000-pound penetrating munitions. A large Iranian naval vessel has been hit and possibly destroyed. Israel has issued mass evacuation orders in Lebanon covering over one million people and struck Hezbollah’s command infrastructure across Beirut. The defense secretary has promised dramatically increased US firepower. The IDF chief has promised new and undisclosed phases.
Iran’s leadership council has moved quickly to address the succession. Iranian state television reported that discussions had begun on how to convene the assembly of experts, the body responsible under Iran’s constitution for selecting a new supreme leader. Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the slain supreme leader, has been discussed as a frontrunner. Trump, in an interview, dismissed him as inadequate and said he wanted someone who would bring harmony and peace to Iran — implying that the US would somehow have leverage over who emerges from a theocratic succession process.
The practical mechanism by which Trump imagines he would exercise that influence has not been explained. Iran’s constitutional process for selecting a supreme leader is an internal religious and political affair. No foreign government has ever had a formal role in it. American military pressure could theoretically influence who is willing to serve or who the regime’s remaining power brokers are prepared to support. But it is a far leap from military campaign to executive search committee for an adversarial theocracy.
Iran’s government, for its part, appears determined to conduct its own succession according to its own procedures. The leadership council’s meeting was reported on state television as a normal constitutional function, not a crisis moment. The message was clear: Iran’s political system would survive the death of its supreme leader. Trump’s vision of choosing that leader’s successor has not been welcomed, acknowledged, or in any way accepted by the country he is bombing.